Ear Conditioning · The Guevara Convention

Filastine has given us La Muerte, inspired by the work and unfortunate death of Brad Will. Bradwas in Oaxaca, Mexico videotaping the teachers' strike when gunmen opened fire. Will was shot twice and died while he was being carried away from the area. Along with Will, two protesters – Esteban Zurita López and teacher Emilio Alonso Fabián – were also killed. The snare sound in the track is one of the shots fired at Brad just before he was killed.

Greetings people,The latest addition to the Guevara Convention is Checkpoint303, with a track called Gaza Calling.I think i came across them because they played alongside Massive Attack for the shows in support of the Hoping Foundation, a group that helps Palestinian children in refugee camps throughout the region.Checkpoint 303´s members are based in Palestine, France and Tunisia, and i think are about as real as you can get, when it comes to authenticity and the struggle. The following is taken from their website.Checkpoint 303 is inspired by the sounds that pace the daily lives of millions of people in the middle east. screeching sounds of bullets. echoing injustice. uproar. revolt. dispair and sadness. and still amidst all this the soothing sounds. of hope. of normality. trivial acts. life like everywhere else. this is not a video game. violence is not a moving image on tv. it's the daily nightmare of millions...

Gaza Calling features their friend Bilal, a citizen of Gaza, on the phone trying to get through to the United Nations. It´s a track about the hopes of help, a song about and for the international community.

I have spoken with Aleksander, the brains behind the Clandestino Festival in Gothenburg, Sweden about getting Checkpoint303 on-board for the next edition of the festival in June, and he agreed right away. He´s got good taste, does Aleks.

Over the next few months we hope to have tracks from the likes of Filastine and DJ /Rupture.I´ve spoken with both, and they have some very interesting ideas regarding their respective contributions....don´t go too far.

October 9 2007 is the 40th anniversary of the death of Ernesto ´Che´ Guevara. Since his image, writings and influence has spread across the world, the thought of putting a compilation album to commemorate his life has been in my head for a few years. Our small team has tried to get record company interest in this but it has not materialized, which in reality is how it´s supposed to be, and i was stuck in the mental time-zone of CD format ideology. Use what is at my fingertips,

I think Ernesto´s sense of care for the people of Latin America (and beyond) especially after his initial travels around the continent where he got to see first-hand the subjugation of a people by the USA and it´s excessive greed, is something that many people are still living with today, and it seems that things have only gotten worse with it´s influence and misuse of power growing day by day.

So I am writing to you because I think you could contribute in some way, with art, words, music, ideas, suggestions, distribution, whatever....

The project would be a compilation album with music inspired by ´Che´ and/or the revolutionary spirit that he embodied. The contributions do not have to mention ´Che´ directly, but it´s the spirit for humanities well-being and desire and efforts to bring about a change in our status, conditions and environment that he and thousands, millions of others had worked tirelessly for.

"Above everything, be always capable to feel deep inside any injustice committed against anybody anywhere in the world."

Ernesto ´Che´ Guervara.

In this day it makes sense to use the internet as an avenue of our collective expression. The plan now is to upload at least one piece of music, image, essay, etc. a month running over the year, starting from next week October 9 to be precise as that was the day Che was retired as a living human.

Through the internet, some of us have the ability to ´make friends´ with people we have never met and will most probably never ever meet. However through some of our ´friends´ we have learned of something that we had no knowledge of previously, and through some of these ´friends´ meaningful relations have flourished and connections made. My point being that our knowledge base is constantly expanding and contributions can arise instantly and uploaded as soon as one wishes and hence shared. So with this in mind, we can dispense with the limited ideology of a CD and it´s restrictions, imagined or real.

History appears to be filled with a continuous flow of stories of rebellion against tyrannies large or small, that hold no regard for the fact that we all came onto the earth in the very same manner as the those next door or across ocean´s and therefore entitled to a life without the enforced burdens laid upon one´s shoulders down by whoever thinks they are "The Man" and governments of ill repute whose icons parade as saints and saviors.

The Guevara Convention is a space where to express the revolutionary change that we seek....or maybe i just need to lighten up a bit and read Hello / Hola.

John Hutnyk wrote the this and inspired the title. Which leads to issues surrounding the iconic status and state of reality, which is something that DJ/ Rupture has said he would like to tackle in his contribution.

It is my wish that you still see something in this for you to contribute to and be part of.

We have also had positive response from Indigenous Resistance, Coldcut, Filastine, Las Ratas, Fermin Murguza, Clandestino (artwork), Dr. FDM, Dr. Das, Ramjac, Sandy Hoover and Los de Abajos. Shaheen, who was in S.African hip hop pioneers Prophets of da City, is now residing in Toronto, doing a university thing on hip hop and politics is now onboard also. Shaping up nicely.